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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25584784">Made in Kind</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/wormware/pseuds/wormware'>wormware</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rockman.EXE | Mega Man Battle Network</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Body Modification, Dubious Consent, M/M, Partial Mind Control</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 04:16:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Underage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,491</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25584784</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/wormware/pseuds/wormware</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Saito wakes at exactly 02:00 and changes quietly into a hoodie and trackpants. The nights now are suffocatingly humid, but his temperature systems are well-equipped to deal with the heat. Being outfitted head to toe in bio-mechanical parts does have its perks</em>.</p><p><em>His family's guard system is housed in a box facing the front door. It's wired to a camera over the porch and set to record, with the slightest movement, any comings and goings from the house. Saito puts a hand to the box, and makes use of one of the shadier tricks he's picked up from the Underground. His eyes light up, and he begins to </em>interface.</p><p>Saito isn't quite as rule-abiding as people think he is.</p><p>Making a trip to the Underground at night to meet with an S-Rank criminal is more than frivolous - it's irresponsible, it's petty, and it's dangerous.</p><p>But when it comes to Forte, there's nothing that could keep Saito from coming back.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Forte.EXE | Bass.EXE/Rockman.EXE | MegaMan.EXE</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Made in Kind</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Please be sure to read the tags before you proceed.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Saito's internal alarm pings him awake at exactly 02:00 just as, in the bed above him, Netto's snoring deepens to match the cadence of deep sleep.</p><p>His bedsprings creak a little as Saito levers himself out of bed, enough to make him wince, but not enough to wake his brother. He changes out of his PJs and into a shapeless hoodie and trackpants. Summer and the rainy season make the nights suffocatingly humid, but his temperature regulation systems are well-equipped to deal with any excess heat. Being outfitted head to toe in bio-mechanical parts so that he can function without aid, for the most part, does have its perks.</p><p>His father's guard program is housed in a box on the wall opposite the front door. It sends wireless signals to a camera placed inconspicuously on their porch, primed to record at the slightest movement. Saito holds up a hand to the box and takes a moment to steady himself before making use of one of the shadier tricks he's picked up from the Underground. With only the slightest twinge of guilt, his eyes light up a hazy green, and he begins to <em>interface</em>.</p><p>The program inside is a simple thing, unable to emulate emotions or generate independent thought, but still, Saito sees starbursts behind his eyes with every information packet and memory file that zips from one point of connection to the next. It takes little probing to arrive at its command routines, nestled behind a passcode that he keys in with a single thought. Within the neatly-labelled folder, he rewrites the program's status from ‘alert’ to ‘standby’, and routes it to a timer with more than enough time for him to slip outside and lock the door shut behind him.</p><p>Saito shakes out the pins and needles in his hand and breathes in deep the rain-heavy air. He's been learning to slip in and out of the computerized world more often, but manipulating a whole other realm of ones and zeroes and electric wires still poses a challenge for him despite the cybernetic technology that's been fitted to own brain. He hasn't really gotten the knack for it, yet. Not like...</p><p>He shakes his head, pulling his hood up so that it shadows his distinctive green eyes, and takes off at a jog for the subway station. Messing with his own house's security protocols is among the tamer uses for <em>interfacing</em>. Cybernetic neurology is becoming increasingly more accessible to people outside of SciLab's in-house development teams and, like any tool, it's been applied for purposes both kind and cruel. Saito owes a lot to the technology that has been gifted to him by his father, the top researcher in the field, but he's also crossed paths with more than one criminal organization that relied on bio-enhancements to hack into high-security systems and databases. As an honorary police official himself, he knows that any recorded instance of <em>interfacing</em> is flagged as a criminal act, one that necessitates extensive investigation and harsh penalties.</p><p>Saito glances nervously at the few lit windows he passes by on the way to the Metroline. If anyone happens to look outside, the hope is that he'll look the part of a late-night jogger out for a convenience store run. The only thing that might indicate his youth would be his height, shorter than his own twin's. Stunted growth, his father had informed him, was only one of the side effects of having a partially-damaged brain melded with experimental bio-tech. Go figure.</p><p>It isn't just Netto's height that Saito envies. At sixteen, Netto's grown up with a freedom that Saito, with all of his health scares, will never get to have himself. Where Saito's learned to be vigilant of the boundaries their parents have sketched out for him ever since he can remember, Netto's developed a tendency to flout the rules, with a single-minded zeal that gets him into trouble just as much as it gets him out of it. Years of free reign, coupled with the confidence that someone will be there to bail him out, makes his brother rebellious and undisciplined in a way that exasperates Saito daily.</p><p>Then again, if it weren't for Netto pulling Saito outside of his comfort zone during his more impulsive moments, Saito is certain that he'd never have stumbled across the Underground. He wouldn't have the standing with the police that he does now. He wouldn't have helped to save the country several times over.</p><p>He wouldn't be breaking the law while sneaking out under their parents' noses at night.</p><p>He pays his fare in change at the station, and boards an empty carriage when the train arrives. It'll fill up as he arrives closer to the downtown centre, but in the residential areas, the Metroline is always quiet at this time of night. He starts to breathe easier as it pulls away from his ordinary life.</p><p>Downtown Densan is still bustling with crowds when he resurfaces onto its sidewalk, entertaining late-night partygoers and business people alike. A neverending flow of cars readily ferries people to every brightly-lit corner of the city's core. Saito knows that he's not likely to run into anyone that'll call him out in the thick press of bodies, but he keeps his head ducked low until he leaves the main roads to stride through alley after alley.</p><p>The mass of people begins to thin out the deeper he goes, and the streetlamps transform from expensive, white-hot fluorescents to flickering warm-amber bulbs that cloak Saito's body in heavy shadows. This far away from the city's public face, he comes across a concrete corridor lined with vendors who sneer at him as he passes by. They hawk all manner of items behind their collapsible booths, from recycled scrap-metal parts and knock-off brand items, to questionable vials and hard drives carrying things more nefarious than bootleg movies.</p><p>If he were in his battlesuit and mask, he doesn't doubt that they'd recognize him at once; among the members of the Underground and in the Densan Police Force, he operates as Rock, one of the few enhanced fighters given license to patrol the area to deter crime. Regulations dictate that he enters designated criminal zones like these only when in uniform and reporting remotely to an operator at Headquarters. It is difficult and dangerous for civilians to enter the Underground on their own and return unscathed.</p><p>The first time that he and Netto had stumbled into the Underground after making several wrong turns had been frightening, nevermind that they'd happened upon it in broad daylight. They'd been lucky, that first time, to have come across Enzan and Blues, an operator-battler team who'd been stationed in the area as part of an undercover op. Enzan had chewed them out for being careless but in the end, he'd had little choice but to bring them along on his mission, and that was how Saito had met <em>him</em>.</p><p>Forte.</p><p>The first person Saito had met who's very aura was dark with innumerable deaths, who answered to nothing and no one. Who'd had the power to stand up to a licensed battler and <em>win</em>.</p><p>The first person Saito had met who was as much machine as himself. Who'd torn him to pieces and left him bruised and struggling to push air through a failing respiratory system, and said, while looking down at Saito with his red, red eyes: <em>Live, little fighter. Return and challenge me again</em>.</p><p>Dad had panicked at almost losing Saito and outfitted him with brand new parts that were sturdier and more flexible than his old machinery. Parts that were fit for combat, suitable for his new appointment as a battler. Shamefully, Saito's first thought after hearing about his upgrades had not been about the good that SciLabs intended he do with them. Instead, he had thought, selfishly, <em>This means that next time, I can fight Forte for real</em>.</p><p>And he has — many times at this point. After each encounter, Forte grows stronger from the accumulation of skills from his fallen foes. In between school, extracurriculars, and the threat of the next criminal organization, Saito trains relentlessly for that fleeting exhilaration of exchanging blows with him again.</p><p>Even in this age of constant surveillance, finding Forte is next to impossible. He evades any organized effort to pin him down or track his movements — but Forte always makes an exception for Saito.</p><p>The rendezvous point appears no different from any other alley that Saito had passed on the way here, save for one thing: the building exteriors are no longer constructed out of tile and concrete, but old, crumbling brick-and-mortar. Away from prying eyes and closed-circuit cameras, Saito throws off his hood and allows the brown hair hidden underneath to tumble over his eyes.</p><p>“You made me wait,” says a familiar voice. The path ahead and behind Saito lies empty. From above?</p><p>Saito's lunges out of the way as a dark shadow so fluidly leaps from the rickety fire escape overhead, and the man stands, with a fighter's grace in every limb. For how familiar he is now, from his ostentatiously-finned helmet to his ragged cloak, Forte's every move makes Saito's breath quicken, and his hair stand on end. Despite all of Saito's training and hard-won experience against opponents bigger and stronger than himself, the difference between them remains a gulf wider than he can imagine.</p><p>Still, Saito says, “I'll try to make it up to you then, Forte.” He puts his fists up and widens his stance, and he watches Forte's lips stretch over a chilling, hungry smile.</p><p>The liquid-white shine of his teeth blurs before Saito's eyes as Forte transitions into an attack. The machinery in him is a work of art — he snaps a hand to cut at Saito's neck, and there isn't even a whisper of hydraulics. Not the slightest creak in his joints when he twists to knee at Saito's stomach.</p><p>His every strike is deathly silent, and the only sound from their sparring is the <em>thud thud thud</em> from Saito parrying his blows.</p><p>Even before receiving a change of parts and a license from the police, Saito had already had years of dedicated martial arts training under his belt. Controlled combat is always a quick and effective way to recalibrate his limbs and ensure the dexterity and coordination of his joints. Fighting in the Underground, however, is a different exercise altogether. Every blow from Forte is calculated to kill, and Saito has learned, if he wants to survive, to follow suit.</p><p>He aims his next punch for Forte's head. When Forte dodges to the side, Saito's other hand comes up to stab at his eyes.</p><p>He realizes, too late, that he's been baited. Forte reaches under his guard and grasps Saito's throat. The <em>crack</em> from his skull hitting the wall makes Saito's vision swim but still, he continues to fight. There's nothing Forte hates more than pitiful prey. He bares his teeth, shoves a heel into Forte's stomach, scratches at his hard, metal arm. Forte barely budges.</p><p>“Is this still the best you can do?” There's disgust in every syllable. “You disappoint me, Rock.”</p><p>Saito forces a grin, and he hopes that he's made it every bit as shark-toothed and defiant as any his brother could make. “But we've barely started,” he wheezes, and executes a command into his arms.</p><p>The gears in his elbows realign themselves with a clunk, and in the second that Forte's eyes flick downward to follow the sound, Saito swings his fist into Forte's face.</p><p>The impact that his knuckles make against synthesized flesh and alloyed bone is always horrendously satisfying. Saito's face aches from how wide his mouth stretches against it.</p><p>“Scum,” Forte hisses, but when he steadies himself his eyes are shining with glee, his cheek reddening but otherwise no worse for wear. He really is made of wondrous stuff. “I'll break you for your insolence.”</p><p>“You can try,” Saito says, and this time, it's his turn to go on the offensive.</p><p>His blows have more force behind them for this round, though his shoulders throb with the blowback from each punch. The tension in his arms make it harder too, to still move quickly, to dodge, parry, block, strike.</p><p>Forte flicks his wrist. A sharp-edged blade snaps from a hidden compartment in his arm and Saito leaps back to put some space between them. He flings his arm up, his palm opened to Forte's fast-advancing figure, and shoots off a round of plasma blasts.</p><p>One of them clips Forte by the shoulder and, incredibly, he <em>stumbles</em>. In a blink, Saito closes the distance to kick at Forte's feet and tackle him against the wall. He pins Forte's sword hand against it, and wraps the hand still humming with energy around a steel-rimmed neck.</p><p>Forte locks eyes with him from above, breathing hard. His muscles are fixed tight with an unnatural stillness.</p><p>“Checkmate,” Saito breathes.</p><p>“Check again,” says Forte, and something sharp presses hard against where Saito's ribs wrap around his heart. Another blade.</p><p>“Don't be a sore loser, Forte.” The hand clenched over Forte's throat tightens and emits a thin whine as Saito kicks up its charge. “If you wanna die so bad, I won't have any trouble blasting you where you stand.”</p><p>“Do it,” says Forte, unconcerned, and even as his face is engulfed in sizzling energy, the hand that Saito had captured rises with little effort. The blade pushes harder between Saito's ribcage, and he stumbles back, letting go in a panic.</p><p>Forte's form, rushing forward, knocks Saito off balance, and he finds himself once again shoved up against a wall, a knife still poised to stab at his heart, and Forte's undamaged body looming over him, his face alight with victory.</p><p><em>This is it</em>, Saito thinks, and terror and excitement alike sing in his blood when Forte slides his fingers along Saito's nape, and bares the pale, unmarked skin of his neck to Forte's hungry mouth.</p><p>When teeth scrape sharp over his jugular, Saito's shoulders shudder, and he slumps in surrender. Forte's won. Unambiguously. Again. And he'll take what he's owed from the loser in pieces, in bloody chunks if he has to.</p><p>He doesn't have to with Saito.</p><p>The hand pressed to his ribs comes around to Saito's waist and, distantly, Saito realizes that Forte has sheathed his blades. The touch against his nape gentles, and runs to the dip in the base of Saito's skull. Forte's lips are a wry pressure against his jaw.</p><p>“Look at you,” he sneers, “Made ready for me like this. It would be pathetic if it weren't so amusing.”</p><p>Saito groans, and makes a token effort to pull away, but the shock of fingernails dragging against a sensitive ridge at the top of his spine sends a spasm through him, and he very nearly goes slack.</p><p>“Give me your mind.” Forte's voice winds its way, smoke-like, into Saito's ears. “Show me how you performed those tricks. Make yourself useful to me.”</p><p>A sigh escapes Saito's lips as Forte twists out the screws set in the skin on the back of his neck. The cosmetic cover, when peeled away, reveals a tempered-glass shell that contains a complex mix of tactile circuitry and wires, man-made neurons that send electric signals from his brain to every inch of his hybridized body. Saito's eyes glow and go unfocused as Forte lays his fingers over the glass casing, and begins to <em>interface</em>.</p><p>Forte's consciousness invades Saito's, heavy, dense, and all-encompassing. His claws rake over Saito's memories, and vulnerable, inexperienced Saito is given no choice but to lie unresisting in Forte's arms, shivering unceasingly against an assault from within.</p><p>Forte pierces his way into a more recent memory, and pauses to watch Saito's father carefully seal together a patch of fresh synthetic skin around the new parts in Saito's arm: a lightweight but powerfully-coiled mechanism suitable for heavy lifting.</p><p>“Can it be used to fight?” Saito had asked while tensing and turning his arm, adjusting to the foreign machinery and synchronizing it with his nervous system. Dad had pursed his mouth and shaken his head.</p><p>“I've certainly taken that into account,” he'd said, every nuance of his paternalistic disapproval recorded in perfect detail. “But please, be sure to leave that as a last resort for when you need to defend yourself. You're not to use it while sparring or outside of the most dire emergencies. Do you understand?”</p><p>Mirth sparks through their connection. <em>An ingenious design</em>, Forte murmurs to Saito's pliant mind. <em>Though scientists such as him remain fools for trying to limit your capacity. How wasteful</em>.</p><p>Saito's conscience stirs, balking at the rebuke towards his father, but Forte digs his talons deeper into him, and Saito's eyes roll back in his head, his body going stunned and submissive once more. With an enviable ease, Forte executes a command through Saito's circuitry, overriding control over his own body, and he feels the gears in his elbows realign themselves back into standby position. The plasma cannons in his hands power down and truly, in this moment, Saito feels powerless; disarmed. He feels Forte's wicked grin trace itself under his chin.</p><p><em>Be proud, Rock</em>, he whispers. <em>You are carving your own path, as I did once. You know your potential. Do not falter</em>.</p><p>The very idea that someone as powerful and sought-after as Forte would have such expectations of Saito — it's a heady feeling. As close as they are, in body, in spirit, Forte is all that Saito can see, feel, think about, and against his better judgement, Saito finds himself responding to that dangerous proximity.</p><p>It's impossible that Forte could miss the way that Saito is growing hard between the two of them, especially with how Saito's thoughts begin to bleed with humiliation.</p><p>Forte rears back to bite at Saito's lip and digs his nails in harder against the glass, sending painful shocks of sensation shooting down to Saito's cock. His brain floats ever higher from every irreverent touch, his thoughts thinning and fading as soon as they form, ceding way to the force of nature that's made itself at home inside him, and he can't tell the difference anymore between his own satisfaction and Forte's as his mouth lets out a high, desperate keen.</p><p><em>You know what comes next</em>, says the voice in his mind. <em>Look at yourself, how you</em> beg <em>for it</em>.</p><p>And Saito becomes aware, in blurry snatches of clarity, of his body writhing against Forte's, of Forte pressing a leg to the space where his thighs join, of how Saito clutches at Forte's cloak with a force that might tear at the weather-beaten cloth. His throat makes punched-out “<em>ah, ah, ah</em>”s, small aborted sounds that Forte swallows with greedy lips and tongue.</p><p>A hand slips under Saito's hoodie and drags upward, baring Saito to his enemy, his body made desperate and willing by the very touch that had so skilfully taken him apart in the past. He scratches the nails of his free hand along Saito's collarbone and, where synthetic skin might indent but remain whole, Forte's knowing fingers draw red lines and pinpricks of blood over Saito's flesh. Tears drip from Saito's green-lit eyes, but with Forte exercising a finely-tuned precision over Saito's senses, his nerves zing, not with pain, but with pleasure and it drives him near mad for more.</p><p>But Forte doesn't open up more of Saito's skin despite the unceasing litany of <em>please please please</em> running through his fevered mind. He smears his thumb against the red pooling on Saito's collar and draws it back to drag along his own tongue. Watching Forte taste him makes Saito's breathing hitch and he knocks his head back and whines, made stupid with desire.</p><p>“I'll devour you, little fighter,” Forte promises, his eyes burning red-hot with Saito helpless and squirming in his strong, unyielding hands. “Down to the marrow of you, ‘til you're nothing but gnawed bone on my plate.”</p><p>At Saito's breathy moan, Forte grins, and his teeth are a dim gleam under the lamplight. “You would like that, wouldn't you, Rock.”</p><p><em>Yes</em>.</p><p>There's a hand pulling at Saito's pants, there's hot breath washing over his jaw, whispering fearful, dangerous things in his ear, there's a force at the base of his skull, pressing Saito into Forte's collar so that all that he can see is darkness within and without — and Saito comes back to himself suddenly, violently, when Forte wraps a hand around his cock, and <em>strokes</em>.</p><p>Embarrassing, needy sounds pour out of Saito's mouth — words like “faster” and “more” — and Forte pulls him closer, drawing Saito flush against him. Something makes contact with Saito's hip, a hardness that he realizes is Forte's own arousal, still confined within his pants.</p><p>Forte's mind against his is less guarded now than when he entered Saito, and there is a cavernous, endless wanting in him, a yawning desire that he refuses to form into words, to acknowledge in front of another. Saito unclenches one of his hands, and it travels downward in an unsteady path to Forte's waistband. He brushes against the leaking tip of him and Forte hisses, flinching away.</p><p><em>Please, let me</em>, Saito thinks, and <em>I want to</em>. There is wariness again, crawling back in the hard edges of Forte against him, but he returns nevertheless, and finally, finally, allows Saito to touch him.</p><p>His hand closes around Forte's dick, and they groan together at the unexpected jolt of pleasure that shoots up and down their spines. Their defenses, what were left of them, crumble away as they chase the heat in each other's bodies and souls, as all the dark, cold places in their minds are filled and warmed and soothed, and they work each other higher and higher and higher.</p><p>Their knuckles chafe at each other as they stroke ever quicker. A thumb rubs against the tip of one lust-flushed, dripping cock, and they moan into mouths crushed together, humid, panting breaths travelling quick and hurried between them, and the cooling fluid in their bodies pumps in overtime, keeping tempo with their hearts as the air is made stickier, hotter, with exertion.</p><p>Their consciousnesses spill into each other, and begin to muddy the distinctions between their selves. Saito's sharp teeth cut into Forte's mouth. Forte's hand curls soft against Saito's back. There are fingers pressed against the sheer surface of someone's neck, there are glowing eyes that stream from more stimulation than the body is able to handle, and through it all, their hands continue to work the length of their cocks until they come suddenly, at once, together, and their sight is overwhelmed with white. Their soul shudders, wracked by a wave of relief so colossal that they are nearly crushed under it, and in the raw honesty of being one, there is nothing inside them but a bone-deep, excruciating wholeness.</p><p>They lean against the wall panting, weak-kneed, their bodies humming with the remnants of their sex as come cools on their stomachs. This belonging, no matter how many times they create it together, is still somehow novel and foreign every time, and they go loose-limbed, savouring the feeling, short-lived as it will be.</p><p>Eventually, the parts of them that had flowed seamlessly into each other coalesce once again into separate beings, their sense memory returning to them the details of their individuality in bits and pieces. Rock — no, Saito, becomes aware that his hand still rests absently against a hard thigh, and that there is a weight leaning heavy against his shoulder. He blinks away some residual wetness in his eyes that refracts the light from his sockets back into his head.</p><p>The fingers that bridge the gap between them slide down and away from his neck, and Saito finds himself again alone in his mind. There is an ache in the spaces where Forte had filled him, a keen loss of intimacy that never seems to dull no matter how many times they do this, and Saito's throat lets out a tiny, hurt noise that he hadn't known he could make.</p><p>He hears a hoarse, “Turn around,” and his body is already moving, convinced, still, that the mind of another possesses command over it. The casing to his neurocircuitry is fitted again to the back of his neck, as secure as it had been before. Forte's steel-hard fingers linger over the manufactured flesh; even after he withdraws completely, he leaves residual tingles from his touch.</p><p>Saito doesn't turn back, instead pulling a cloth out of his pocket and wiping at his hands and the mess over his chest and stomach. He pulls his pants back up, and straightens out the wrinkles in his hoodie as best as he can. By the time he's done making himself presentable, Forte is already gone.</p><p>On the wall opposite him is pinned a note, with only a time and a place written on it. Saito smiles and commits it to memory before he lifts his palm and lights it with a plasma shot. Even if he weren't outfitted with a half-computerized brain, he's sure he wouldn't have any trouble remembering it. Every day, after all, is spent in eager anticipation of the next time he'll cross paths with Forte.</p><p>Forte's parting words circle at the front of Saito's mind, left there before he'd returned Saito back to his obligation-bound, honour-student self. <em>One day, you will see that these authority figures only hold you back, Rock. Once you leave those lab coats and their rules for good, it's only then that you'll realize your true worth. Remember that</em>.</p><p>It's strange, Saito thinks blearily. SciLabs is undoubtedly where Forte had received his original implants and his parts, to say nothing of his unique, highly-coveted copy ability. And yet, his every sentiment towards the place doing miraculous work for people like him and Saito contains nothing but contempt.</p><p>Saito had thought to ask Dad once, what exactly had happened in SciLab's past, but his father had only turned away, and said in a strained, reluctant tone, “It's classified.”</p><p>Forte's parting message and the uncertainty of it all leaves Saito anxious about the very institution that had molded him growing up — that keeps him alive.</p><p>But for all his own misgivings, and the time that he cherishes being away, Saito doesn't think he could ever fully leave this life, his home, his duty to the greater good. He's not quite so strong, so fiercely independent. Not like his brother, and not like Forte.</p><p>Saito draws his hood back up, and makes his way to where the lights around him steadily become colder and whiter once again. His place in the world, and his purpose, had been decided for him long ago. No amount of late-night rebellion, or moments shared with shadows could ever change that.</p><p>Everything about Saito is only what other people have made him to be, after all.</p>
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